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Endless

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Although I made no mention yesterday of coming under the wicked spell, my base weakness to successfully struggle against negative addictive impulses won out and I surrendered myself to it all.

Hours were lost over the course of the late afternoon and into the second half of the evening. I managed a temporary break to watch some T.V. via the Android TV Box, while having a small supper and a can of strong (8% alcohol) beer; but unwilling to betake myself directly to bed as I had so hoped, I again released myself into the clutch of punishing despair.

The slide was long. In fact, it was 2:00 a.m. before I finally put myself to bed for what night I was to have there. It was 6:41 a.m. when I next checked the time and decided that I might as well rise and get to work on the new post I have been putting together for over a week now at my Lawless Spirit website. I knew it unlikely that I would be venturing forth to do the grocery shopping I had hoped to get done at the supermarket I often frequent about 1¼ miles distant.

No one was home when I retired last night, yet I could see Poté's car in the driveway after I went downstairs to make my morning's mug of hot blended instant coffee/cocoa powder.

Incidentally, I limited myself to the one can of beer last evening ─ a trend that has now been in play for over a month, I believe. I had taken two cans with me to the living room, but I returned the second one to my supply beneath my bed when I was done with television.

A couple of evenings ago, the T.V. news predicted that today was to be sunny. Yet ere 8:30 a.m., I could hear rain starting to fall.

I wanted to try and get in some exercise out in the backyard shed before my younger brother Mark returned home after spending the night at the home of his girlfriend Bev, so in the vicinity of 9:00 a.m. I broke from that post work to change into cut-offs and head on out to the small shed.

I discovered that it was not just raining. The backyard sundeck was slippery with what I presumed to be some rather crunchy hail. But I was also to soon realize that there was wet snow in that icy rain.

The exercise was somewhat disappointing in that I felt unnaturally heavy, and as a consequence I found some exercise sets reduced in repetition totals. Nevertheless, I did not let it discourage me, and I remained at it until I had done what I came there to do.

Once I was back to work at the website post, it was not too long ─ possibly not much beyond 9:30 a.m. ─ that the rain sounded like it was abating. Anon, I was to realize that the precipitation had most definitely not stopped. All it had done was turn into full snow.

Thankfully, it was short-lived ─ a half-hour at best. And soon one could not even tell that there had been snow.

I did well with the post work this morning. I put more than what would normally serve as a day's effort into it; and I may try to add further content yet, depending when I finish my post here. After all, I suspect that my wife Jack will show up from Vancouver late this evening to spend the night, and that makes finding the time to put in a day's usual website effort rather difficult. Thus, whatever extra work I can supply Lawless Spirit today will dramatically lighten tomorrow's burden.

Mark arrived home this morning around 10:30 a.m. And while he was showering, I put together what was to be today's first meal ─ I tend to eat but twice a day, without any snacking.

Soon after I had consumed it, the noon hour had arrived. Mark had just resorted to his bedroom awhile before, most likely to seek a nap. Very early into the noon hour, I did the same, spending a good hour in bed.

I rose to find Mark gone, and Poté finally up.

That precipitation ─ it was finished late in the morning, and the cloud cover was starting to break up somewhat. When I rose from my nap, I could see lots of blue sky out there.

But let's return to talk of far better weather ─ specifically, as in yesterday's post when I offered a number of photos taken when some kind of special meal was getting set up in or near Nong Soong, my wife Jack's home village in Thailand.

Nong Soong isn't more than maybe a 15-minute drive from the city of Udon Thani.

I believe that these photos were taken on November 8, 2016. However, that is impossible to pin right down, for Jack's camera's date settings had not likely been changed for the trip ─ and Thailand is more than a half-day ahead of us here in B.C.

So there are three variables making it impossible to know precisely just when it was that the photos were actually taken.

The woman in the first two photos is someone my wife Jack has always referred to as being Jack's "sister-cousin":

Hong Thong whisky is apparently brewed from molasses and rice, and is 35% alcohol:

Here is Jack having fun with the bottle:

"Sister-cousin" again, getting that meal all set up for those present to enjoy:

My wife Jack posing at that table:

Nest up, Jack's "sister-cousin" at the left; the central woman is unfamiliar to me; and the woman at the right so nearly resembles Jack's mother that I am inclined to suggest that it is the mother's sister. Oddly, Google's face recognition feature suggests that it is indeed Jack's mother ─ yet it bases that identification upon an old photo of the mother from back when Jack was a girl. Thus, it might still be the mother's sister, I suppose ─ neither is ruled out:

Darn ─ maybe it really is Jack's mother ─ it looks much more like here at the left in this next photo. The man walking past in the background is Jack's only surviving brother, Santi:

Here is Jack's brother Santi again:

Again, Jack's "sister-cousin" at the left; a woman unfamiliar to me in the centre; and potentially Jack's mother at the right:

My wife Jack at the right is the only woman I can identify in the next two shots:

And I shall stop here for today.

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I have already posted within the past few days about the recent study which found that women taking bisphosphonates to address osteoporosis have been shown to have previously undetected micro-fractures that are attributed to the medications, but I want to add these two further references to that study:

Although I am sometimes prone to the often debilitating migraine halo or aura, I do not actually get the headache itself.

But for those folks who do, there is reportedly a gadget that might make it to market that helps at least one out of two migraine sufferers stop their attack if it is used promptly at first onset of symptoms.

The afternoon has become very sunny. If I was not in thralldom to the fruitless pursuit of a second income online via blogging, I could have been out in the backyard soaking up some of those healing rays. There is no breeze.

I heard a 4:30 p.m. weather report that proclaimed we are to expect temperatures to drop down to the freezing level overnight. I hope none of the flower plants that my wife Jack transplanted last Monday will be harmed.

I am going to close out now with an entry from my journal of 41 years ago when I was 26 years old, and living in a basement housekeeping unit in New Westminster. I was renting the modest appointment in a house located on Ninth Street, and one or two houses up from Third Avenue.

I had been out drinking with my younger brother Mark and his girlfriend Catherine Jeanette Gunther the evening before at the Flamingo Hotel in Whalley ─ Mark and Jeanette only lived a couple of blocks from that place.

They had tried to convince me to spend the night at their home, but I was feeling somewhat dizzy from the drink, and did not want to have to make my way home in the morning ─ I preferred to get it over with at night while I was still full of drunken vigour, and had the dark to keep me anonymous.

I wrote that it was 2:15 a.m. by the time I was in my bed.

Despite that, my plan for this new day was to hike out to visit my mother Irene Dorosh in the Kennedy Heights area of Surrey. The little house she shared with her husband Alex no longer exists, but its address was 12106 - 90th Avenue. It was my main mailing address.

To hike there from my room usually took about 1½ hours of fairly fast walking.

FRIDAY, March 19, 1976

I guess I got up at 9:00 a.m., but didn't sleep much before that. I wonder how working Mark feels?

I left for mom's before 10:00 a.m., finding she'd gone out with Kay.

My mail this mainly sunny day was a postal ad, a book ad from Parker Publishing Co. Inc., and my ordered stamps, 25 of which I gave mom in exchange for Tuesday's Kin Win ticket.

Cathy phoned while mom was out, and we spoke some while before mom got home and took over. Cathy invited me to join her & Mark for whatever they chose to do, but I declined.

Mom had a card saying there was a parcel for her at the post office, so she left afoot to get it while I bathed. As we'd thought, it was cheese we'd collaborated on; but the contents were most disappointing, and I'll not order again.

Mom said David Prince phoned Sunday night about me, having heard of my operation and believing I was still hospitalized.

I overate today, but on pretty good fare; still, calories of any source are calories.

I stayed to get a ride with Kay when she and mom left for work, being let off on Royal just past 7th St.

Yesterday at Mark's I saw the New Year's party pictures; I'm pleased with the 2 of me.

I'd planned to retire peacefully tonight, but about 7:15 p.m. Bill came all hot to get some chicken and go boozing, but I persuaded him out of us risking the group at Nell's or the beer parlours on our own. So we watched TV at his place till 11:00 p.m.

I had 6 pieces of Kentucky chicken, a pint of Royal Hawaiian ice cream, an orange, and a Mr. Pibbs, all at dear Bill's expense.

Bed will be by 11:30 p.m.

Kay Kris or Krys was a friend of my mother's, and also her partner in an evening office janitorial contract they had going.

I frequently ordered commemorative postage stamps just to use on my letters, for I found the common definitives to be too darned boring and commonplace. I did a lot of mailing.

My mother must have given me a Kin Win Lottery ticket, so I passed on half of my commemorative stamps to her.

Jeanette phoned while my mother was out with Kay. Jeanette and I could talk for an incredibly long time on the phone ─ I adored that beautiful young mother of two daughters. The three of them were dearly loved by my mother and Alex, so Jeanette always felt comfortable about calling or visiting them.

I was wrong about calories being calories ─ some sources are indeed far worse than others.

David Prince was an old friend whom I had known since we both were in Grade VIII at Newton Junior High School in Surrey during the 1962/1963 school term. The surgery he was wondering about was a serious appendectomy I had undergone ─ I was not released from hospital until into my twelfth day; and even then, a home care nurse came by for at least a couple of days to change the surgical bandaging, for I had a tube protruding from the incision to allow drainage of infectious matter.

I was just getting back into long walks once again.

The ride back to New Westminster that had me disembark at Royal Avenue and nearly Seventh Street was practically like getting driven home Or at least, it was a mere four blocks from where I lived.

My old friend William Alan Gill also lived in New Westminster ─ perhaps four or so blocks from me, in a bachelor suite he was renting. He could be amazingly spontaneous about doing things. It sounds as if he wanted us to head off into Surrey to my maternal Aunt Nell Halverson's home to party with her large household ─ those parties generally ran the full weekend. One had to be prepared for what one was getting into, so I managed to talk Bill out of it.

I'm unsure what justification I used in order to avoid us going to one of the hotel beer parlours or pubs. Maybe just the drinking and driving risk?

But let's return to the present ─ it is still so very sunny outside at nearly 5:30 p.m.

Just a short time ago I took a break from this post to try and locate some old E-mails that I thought I had saved from the time that I first met my wife Jack in January 2003 in Thailand ─ my first trip there. I was unable to find them, but I never checked all that thoroughly ─ Poté had gone out earlier, and I didn't want to be caught downstairs if he returned with his girlfriend. I prefer avoiding them.

However, I did find an enormous collection of E-mails that I had printed out from back in late 1999 and into the early 2000s that featured ladies I had been in touch with through free online personals advertisements ─ they were women from far afield, of course. I might start reproducing some of that correspondence here in my blog.

I am still somewhat in contact with a couple of those women, both of whom were in Russia back then. One now lives in California, and the other here in B.C.